Ukrainian authorities have continued to collect dead bodies in devastated cities outside the capital, amid indications that Moscow troops have killed civilians indiscriminately before retreating in recent days.
In other news, the United States and its Western allies have moved to impose new sanctions on the Kremlin for war crimes.
And Russia has completed the withdrawal of all its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the Kiev and Chernihiv regions in the north, sending them to Belarus or Russia for supplies and reorganization, most likely to return to battle in the east, US defense.  said on condition of anonymity.
In a nightmare, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the Russian military was continuing to strengthen its forces in the face of a new offensive in the east, in which the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” Donbas, Ukraine’s main Russian-speaking country. .  industrial heart.  He said that Ukraine is also preparing for battle.
“We will fight and we will not retreat,” he said.  “We will look for all possible options to defend ourselves until Russia begins to seriously pursue peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we will not give up.”
Ukrainian authorities have urged people living in Donbass to leave now, in the face of an impending Russian attack, while there is still time.
“Later, people will come under fire,” said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, “and there is nothing we can do to help them.”
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it would take up to a month for Russian forces destroyed by the fighting to regroup for a major push in eastern Ukraine.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombing and street fighting, 210 were children.  He said Russian forces had bombed hospitals, including one in which 50 people had been burned to death.
Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure had been destroyed.  Attacks on the strategic southern city in the Sea of ​​Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses.
British defense officials say 160,000 people remain trapped in the pre-war city of 430,000.  A humanitarian aid convoy accompanied by the Red Cross had been trying unsuccessfully to enter the city for days.
The occupation of Mariupol will allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow occupied from Ukraine in 2014.
In the north, Ukrainian authorities say the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in cities around Kyiv, victims of what Zelenskyy has described as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and torture.  Some victims were apparently shot at close range.  Some were found with their hands tied.
At a cemetery in the city of Bucha, northeast of Kiev, workers began loading more than 60 bodies that had apparently been collected in recent days on a grocery truck for transport to a facility for further investigation.
Zelensky accused Russia of interfering in an international investigation into possible war crimes by removing corpses and trying to hide other evidence in Bucha.
“We have information that Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to remove the dead, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and the cellars of the occupied territory,” he said in a statement.  “This is just an attempt to hide the facts and nothing more.”
Going from Ukraine to Russia, Zelensky urged ordinary Russians to “somehow deal with the Russian repressive machine” instead of “equating themselves with the Nazis for the rest of your life.”
He called on the Russians to demand an end to the war, “if you are even a little ashamed of what the Russian army is doing in Ukraine.”
More corpses were to be collected in Bucha.  The Associated Press saw two in a house in a quiet neighborhood.  From time to time there was a suffocating explosion of workers clearing the city of mines and other unexploded ordnance.
Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv district west of Kiev.  In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March and picked up the phones of locals.  Some people were arrested and later released.  Others experienced unknown fortunes.  Some have described housing for weeks in cellars commonly used to store vegetables for the winter.
The soldiers had left and Russian armored personnel carriers, a tank and other vehicles were sitting damaged on both sides of the road that crossed the village.  Several buildings were turned into piles of bricks and corrugated metal.  The residents fought without heating, electricity or cooking gas.
“At first we were scared, now we are hysterical,” said Valentyna Klymenko, 64. She said she, her husband and her two neighbors overcame the siege by sleeping on stacks of potatoes covered with mattresses and blankets.  “We did not cry at first. Now we cry.”
In the north of the village, in the town of Borodyanka, rescuers combed the ruins of apartment buildings, looking for corpses.  Mine clearance units were operating nearby.
The Kremlin has insisted that its troops have not committed war crimes, accusing the Bucharest images of being directed by Ukrainians.
Their efforts to seize the capital quickly have been thwarted, with President Vladimir Putin’s growing number of troops, along with mercenaries, reportedly moving to Donbass.
At least five people were killed in Russian bombings Wednesday in the Donetsk region of Donbass, according to Governor Pavlo Kirilenko, who urged civilians to flee to safer areas.
In the Luhansk region of Donbass, Russian bombers set fire to at least 10 high-rise buildings and a shopping mall in the city of Sievierodonetsk, the governor said.  There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.
Russian forces also attacked a fuel depot and a factory in the Dnipropetrovsk region, just west of Donbas, authorities said.
Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists in Donbas since 2014. Prior to its February 24 invasion, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.
In response to the alleged atrocities outside Kyiv, the United States announced sanctions against Putin’s two adult daughters and said it was tightening sanctions on Russian banks.  Britain has banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year.
The European Union is also expected to take additional punitive measures, including a carbon embargo.
Meanwhile, the United States and the United Kingdom are boycotting an informal Security Council meeting convened by Russia to justify its claims that the United States has biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine.
The meeting was the latest in a series of Russian moves that have led Western countries to accuse Moscow of using the UN as a disinformation platform to divert attention from the war.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, who chaired the meeting, said the US-backed Ukraine was carrying out dangerous projects and experiments as part of a military biological program.
The charges had previously been dropped.  Ukraine has and operates a network of biological laboratories that have received US funding and research support and are no secret.  Laboratories are part of a program that aims to reduce the likelihood of fatal outbreaks, whether natural or man-made.
US efforts date back to the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s weapons of mass destruction program.
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Oleksandr Stashevskyi and Cara Anna in Bucha, Ukraine, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Associated Press reporters around the world contributed to this report.
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